Kiss River

by Diane Chamberlain

  Rani wore a loose diaper and a white cotton shirt, beneath which Gina could feel every one of her ribs. She was malnourished, she thought, but that might not be the fault of the orphanage. The heart problem could do that, just as it made her breathing so rapid. Gina could feel Rani’s heart tapping against her ribs, and she held her tightly, as though she could keep that heart beating, keep the child alive until she could get her the surgery she needed. Rani didn’t speak, but she listened attentively to every word Gina spoke, mesmerized by the sound of her voice, or perhaps by the English.

  Gina spent three long and wonderful days with Rani, holding her as she slept, playing with her, showing her the picture books she’d brought along, feeding her, teaching her to drink from a sippy cup. Rani opened her mouth like a baby bird waiting to be fed. It took a while, but she finally got the hang of it, and although she didn’t speak, she clung to Gina like a monkey.

  Gina didn’t want to leave the orphanage the night before her court date, but she had to return to her hotel. She’d been warned that the next day would be long and tiring, sitting for hours in the un-air-conditioned courthouse, waiting to receive her guardianship order. She tucked her daughter into bed and kissed her goodbye.

  “I’ll be back tomorrow,” she promised, and she thought for sure Rani understood what she was saying. Later, she was to hope Rani had no idea what those words had meant. She didn’t want her child to think she had lied to her. Because she was not back the next day. That was the day everything changed.

  Gina set Rani’s picture back on the night table and picked up the sheet of paper on which she’d printed an e-mail sent to the Internet support group. She knew the woman who had written the e-mail. Gina had met her and her husband in the courthouse in Hyderabad, where they, too, had been waiting for the court order that would allow them to take their daughter home. Like Gina, they had gone back to the States empty-handed, and she knew from the information they’d shared in the support group that the last couple of months had been as torturous for them as they had been for her, as they waited and battled and hired attorneys and did all they could to get their daughter out of the orphanage. Tonight, though, she knew that couple was suffering even more.

  “We are heartbroken and don’t know where to turn,” the wife had written. “We had not been able to get any information from the state orphanage, where Meena was moved in May, so we flew back to India last week. And there we were told they had no record of Meena ever being there. Neither does the original orphanage where we visited her. We know she was there, since that is where we spent time with her. Meena’s existence has been expunged. It’s as though we’re the only people who know that she ever existed, because we held her and talked to her and loved her. And now we can’t find her. I am sick over what might have happened to her.”

  Gina had never fully understood why Meena had been moved to the state orphanage, but she did know that no one wanted their child in that place. Might Rani be moved as well? Could she also disappear?

  The e-mail had wiped from her mind her distress over the lost four hundred and ten dollars, as well as the unproductive conversation with Alec at the Sea Tern Inn, where she’d looked like an ignorant fool as she tried to answer his questions about the lighthouses in the Pacific Northwest. It even, if only for a moment, made her forget what he’d said about the missing panel and her fear that that very panel might turn out to be the part of the lens she needed.

  Closing her eyes, she rested the e-mail on her chest. She used to be an active member of the Internet group, but she could no longer commiserate with those parents. She had become a silent lurker, reading their messages but never responding or posting any news of her own. She could no longer turn to them for advice or sympathy. She had taken a path they would never approve of, and she could not let them know.

  And now it seemed that her only hope to get Rani lay in the secrets of Bess Poor’s diary.

  CHAPTER 22

  Saturday, April 11, 1942

  I love Sandy. I thought I did before last night, but what I feel for him this morning goes a thousand times deeper.

  First of all, all day yesterday planes were flying over the ocean. There’s always some planes because of the bombing range not far from here, but this was different. I figured they were looking for the submarine that let off Miles and Winston. When I got out to the beach to be with Sandy last night, I asked him if that’s what they were doing. He wasn’t sure. He said the water out there is pretty murky, and unless the U-boat was on the surface or not far below it, it wouldn’t be that easy to see. I wish those planes could find it and destroy it. I am getting pretty hard-hearted, I guess.

  Then he gave me my birthday present! He pulled a little package wrapped in tissue paper from the shirt pocket of his uniform. I opened it up and inside was a beautiful ruby necklace! He put it on me, and I wished I’d had a mirror to look at it. I can only wear it with him, since Mama would be sure to notice and ask me where I got it. It’s the most beautiful thing I own.

  Then we got down to the serious business. Sandy knew that Daddy had killed one of the Germans the night before and that the second German had died the afternoon of my birthday without ever coming to. It wasn’t so much the boar that killed him, Bud Hewitt told us, but that he must’ve fallen when the boar attacked him and split his head on a rock. Anyhow, I feel strange about it. I don’t like taking pleasure in somebody dying. But if anybody deserved it, those German boys did.

  So Sandy knew all about how they died, but what he didn’t know, because Daddy wanted it kept real quiet, was what that Miles boy tried with me. I wanted Sandy to know, even though I wasn’t going to tell him all the embarrassing details. We walked along the beach while he was on his patrol and I told him how I woke up, thinking he was touching me, and that it was really Miles. Sandy started cussing up a storm. “Bastard,” he kept saying. “Damn lousy son of a bitch.” I’d never heard words like those out of his mouth before, and I believe that if Miles and Winston, or whatever their names really are, had been there at that moment, Sandy could have killed them both with his bare hands. He was picking up pieces of driftwood and throwing them far out in the ocean, and I knew he was working off his anger.

  After he was done cussing and throwing things, he sat me down on the beach and held me in his arms. “I wish I’d been there to protect you,” he said. He had his arms wrapped tight around me and I could feel his cheek against my forehead. “It must have been so frightening,” he said, and then I started crying. I ended up telling him everything. I couldn’t even tell my own mother what that German did to me and I hadn’t really intended to tell Sandy either. But with him holding me close, I knew I could tell him. I felt so safe talking to him. I could feel his whole body stiffen up as I spoke, like he was going to explode. I cried the whole time I talked. It was the first time I cried about what happened and I was amazed at all the tears I had inside me. I told him how I’d felt dirty afterward, how I scrubbed my skin raw in the bath basin, trying to get any hint of that boy’s touch off me.

  After I told him everything, he was quiet for a while. I finally had to ask him what he was thinking.

  “Now I truly know I’m in love with you,” he said. “I thought I was, but the way I feel right now, how I want to protect you, how I feel as bad for you as if something terrible had happened to me…Well, I think that means I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” I said. I felt very happy. Strange how something good could come out of something so bad.

  “Your first time needs to be with someone who loves you,” he said. “Someone who will take care of you and never hurt you.”

  I’d never thought I’d be the kind of girl who would have sex at the age of (barely) fifteen. I thought only trampy girls did that sort of thing before they were married. But I love him so much that I wanted to do it with him right then and there!

  “Do you think I’m too young?” I asked him.

  He laughed a little. “Yes, you’re way too young,” he said.
“But I want you. I want to erase those bad feelings you have from that German touching you. I want to make you feel wonderful about making love.”

  I have to admit, I wasn’t sure what to do. To be honest, I don’t really know how men and women have relations. I know the basics, of course, but that’s about it.

  “I don’t know how,” I said to him.

  He laughed again, but not at me. “I do,” he said. “Only one of us needs to know how.”

  I turned my head to kiss him, and immediately felt how hot and crazy he was with wanting to make love to me. He touched my breast, but it was through my jacket, so I could barely feel it, and I wanted to tear my jacket off to get him closer. All of a sudden, though, he let go of me.

  “Not now,” he said. “This isn’t the right time or place. I have to finish my patrol, and I want you to have all my attention without me having one eye on the beach. And it’s too cold out here. You’ll catch your death. And timewise, it’s all wrong. Too close to what happened to you with that German. I don’t want what I do to you and what that son of a bitch did to you to be confused together in your mind.”

  I knew he was right, and I was grateful to him for stopping himself, even though I really wanted to do it right then! I kissed him, whispered “someday soon,” and then I left him alone to finish his patrol.

  I walked home through the dark feeling completely unafraid. The bad guys were dead, and I am in love with the world’s most wonderful man.

  CHAPTER 23

  Gina leaned over Walter Liscott’s shoulder to pour more coffee into the cup resting next to the chessboard. He’d add plenty of milk to it, but how these old guys could drink so much caffeinated coffee and not be climbing the walls, she didn’t know. Come to think of it, Brian’s and Henry’s hands did tremble a bit as they moved the chess pieces around the board. She’d assumed it was old age, but maybe it was just Shorty’s potent brew. Walter’s hands, though, were still steady enough to carve his ducks.

  Henry Hazelwood sat across the table from Walter, and Gina rested a hand on his shoulder. “You’re coming over for dinner tonight, aren’t you, Henry?” she asked. Henry came to the keeper’s house for dinner, followed by an hour or so of gin rummy, every Wednesday night. Gina had begged out of the get-together the week before, her first Wednesday in the house, because she’d felt a bit intrusive. After living in the house for a week and a half, though, she knew she would be welcome.

  “Sure am,” the old man said. He was playing—and beating—Walter, while Brian observed every move like a hawk. “You cooking?”

  “As a matter of fact, I am,” she said. “I’m going to make you some Indian food.”

  “Indian food!” Brian Cass said. “You making him buffalo meat, girlie?”

  “Her name is Gina.” Walter shook his head with his usual irritation, but Gina laughed.

  “East Indian food, Brian,” she said. “You know, from India.”

  “Too spicy for that old man.” Brian pointed his crooked finger at Henry.

  “I’ll make it mild,” she promised.

  “I don’t need it mild,” Henry said, obviously annoyed with his friend. “I’ll eat whatever you can dish up, honey.”

  “Gina!”

  Gina turned at the sound of her name to see Brock waving to her from the pool table.

  “Bring us a round?” he asked, pointing to the motley crew of his friends standing near him.

  She nodded. “In a minute,” she said. Her shift was ending, and she would give the order to the waitress who was taking her place. She’d tried to avoid waiting on Brock since the incident on Sunday. Without telling the other waitresses her suspicions, though, she could not avoid him completely. He’d come in yesterday sporting yet another tattoo, this one a finely detailed sea turtle on his back, a bit lower and to the left of the mermaid, and she wondered if he had used her money to pay for it.

  She returned her attention to Henry, who was waiting for Walter to make a move on the chessboard.

  “Clay asked me if I’d pick up some books for you at the library on my way home today,” she said. “He said you like mysteries, right?”

  “Whodunits.” Henry nodded. “I like that…uh…” He waved a finger in the air, trying to come up with a name.

  “That A is for apple lady,” Walter said.

  “Right. That one.” Henry nodded again.

  “I know who you mean,” Gina said, although she couldn’t come up with the author’s name off the top of her head either. “What letter are you up to?”

  Henry laughed. “I jump around,” he said. “But it doesn’t matter. I can read the same one over again and not remember I read it the first time.”

  “All right.” Gina squeezed his shoulder. “I’ll get you a couple of those.”

  “Thank you.” Henry smiled.

  “You boys need anything else before I leave?” she asked.

  “Your shift ending?” Walter looked up at her, his hand on his queen.

  “Yes sir,” she said. “And my feet are happy about it.”

  “Well, we’re not happy about it,” Brian said. “Nobody here can pour coffee the way you do.”

  She laughed. She never got a tip from any of them. As a matter of fact, she wasn’t sure they even paid for all the coffee and occasional beer they drank, but they had definitely become her favorite customers. They’d grieved with her over the outcome of the talk she’d had with Alec on Monday, amazed that he could turn down the request of “such a bright and beautiful girl.” Such sweet old guys. She wondered if they had been jerks when they were younger, like every other man she knew. Except, perhaps, for Clay, whose kindness toward his wife’s grandfather was doing its best to redeem her faith in men.

  She was taking off her apron in the main restaurant when Kenny Gallo walked in. Spotting her, he waved.

  “Hey, Gina,” he said, leaning on the counter near the cash register. “You just getting off?”

  “Uh-huh.” She folded her apron in half, then quarters, making sure her tips were tucked well inside the pocket.

  “Well, have a drink with me,” he said, pointing to an empty table. “Or a Coke, or coffee, or whatever you like.”

  “Thanks, Kenny,” she said, “but I—” She noticed the embroidered name on the pocket of his green polo shirt. Gallo Maritime Construction. “Is that where you work?” she asked, pointing to his pocket

  He glanced down at his shirt. “I own the place,” he said, more than a little pride in his voice. He motioned toward the table again. “Come on,” he said. “Just for a minute. I won’t bite.”

  She nodded, then walked ahead of him to the empty table, guilty that her motivation for doing so rested in the lettering on his shirt and not the man himself.

  “What sort of work does your company do?” she asked once they were seated and had ordered his beer and her Coke from one of her co-workers. The other waitresses were probably talking about them already. “I don’t really know what maritime construction means. I assume you build ships?”

  “Not build so much as repair,” he said. “A couple other guys and me do most of the underwater stuff. Welding, cutting, inspection, that kind of thing.”

  “And you dive even on your time off, huh?” She smiled at him, remembering that he and Clay had explored the Byron D. Benson the previous weekend.

  “Can’t get enough of it.” He grinned. He was cute, in a teddy-bear sort of way, with his full blond beard and laughing blue eyes. “That’s why I’m just about deaf in one ear.”

  “I didn’t know that,” she said. “From diving?”

  “Takes a toll after a while,” he said.

  Their drinks arrived, and Gina took a sip of her Coke while thinking through her next question. But he interrupted her train of thought.

  “You really give this joint some class,” he said.

  She smiled. “Thank you,” she said. “I like working here.”

  “A girl like you should be working at one of the high-end restaurants, though
,” he said.

  Lay it on a little thicker, why don’t you, she thought. “Thanks, but I feel at home in Shorty’s.”

  “I’m not saying I want you to leave,” Kenny said. “I’d miss seeing you here.”

  She smiled again, wondering how she could gracefully turn the conversation back to the subject that interested her most. She took another swallow of Coke.

  “Does your company do any salvage work?” she asked.

  He looked surprised by the sudden return to the previous topic, but shook his head. “No,” he said. “Plenty others around here for that.”

  She toyed with the straw in her drink. “I’m very interested in salvaging the Fresnel lens from the Kiss River lighthouse,” she said.

  “Oh, yeah. Clay said you’re a big fan of that lighthouse.”

  She nodded. “I am. And I’d like to get that lens on dry land and see it displayed somewhere.”

  “It’s probably in so many pieces you could never find them all,” he said.

  “Well, then I’d like to see all the pieces displayed,” she nearly snapped. Settle down, she told herself. Slow and easy.

  “Won’t work,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “They tried years ago but there were these protestors and such, who—”

  “I know all about that,” she said. “But as you pointed out, that was years ago. Maybe things would be different now.”